Mother Nature has been creating weird and wonderful
chemicals for more than three billion years; and we are only beginning to
sift through these hidden treasures. New technologies enable us to find,
analyze and manipulate molecules as never before. While today's laboratory
scientists can synthesize new molecules from scratch at a pace
unimaginable just a few decades back, promising compounds produced by
nature's most creative creatures increasingly provide the optimum starting
points.

Indiscriminate logging and killing of wild life in our
little known forests especially the mangrove forest of the Sunderbans,
Rangamati, Sylhet etc. signal a catastrophic extinction of these vast
untapped wealth and resources. Given the voracious appetite for land and
wild life such as the Royal Bengal Tiger and spotted deers in the
Sunderbans, elephants in the forest of Chittagong and precious wood, these
forests of mystical beauty will one day remain in the history books only.
As the forest area shrinks, the majestic Royal Bengal Tigers disappear
from our sight. The plight of tigers only symbolises the tragic fate of
the whole country's wild life to-day. To be sure, some 40 years ago,
forests draped the country like an elegant green gown covering at least
one fourth of the land area -- nourishing and protecting wildlife. To-day
this very gown is in tatters, slashed by human interests, covering only
about seven per cent of the country.

Human beings are the only ones who possess the power to
snuff life out of all other species in the world. But that power can very
often turn malevolent and that is where we have to be cautious.
Unfortunately for us Bangladeshis, we've been more than malevolent --
we've been natural born killers of wild life and plunderers of forest
resources. We've failed to understand that the earth is one intricate
ecosystem of links by which all life is shaped. Lose one specie and a
thousand others will be on the brink, eventually threatening our survival.
Not only in our own region, far in the African plain elephants, giraffes
and lions and elsewhere some rare species like the Javan rhinoceros,
Philippine eagle lechwe, the Kudu and lilac breasted roller seem to be
disappearing fast. Scientists are worried that in a few generations' time
they could be lost even to the children of Africa and Asia.

One thing is very certain. As we enter the 21st
century, a new global economy draws nations ever closer. But our growing
interdependence hinges on much more than technology and trade. For we are
linked intrinsically by the physical and biological webs that sustain life
on planet -- and increasingly, by the threat of their unraveling. Indeed,
unless we reach across borders and face this threat in an united effort,
the next century may dawn on an Earth in ecological crisis, with half of
the species gone and our children and grand children enduring deadly
floods, drought and disease brought on by global warming more frequently.
Protecting the environment to-day is a sacred human obligation, as
important to us as safe neighbourhoods and good schools. What is needed
now for the government as well as individual is to look beyond our own
cities and countryside, and provide the leadership needed to put all
nations on a cleaner, and more sustainable path to prosperity.

But there are obstacles on the way. Desperate shortages
of human and financial capital impoverish both the people and their land
in Africa and Asia. Bangladesh situation is much more critical. The
country has now a population figure of 130 million with a per capita
income of 270 U.S dollars. Most obviously with limited factors of
production and negligible technological progress, the population growth is
unsustainable. Policies to improve the state of the environment as such
has to be linked with population control mechanisms.

Although book analysis says total forest land in
Bangladesh is about 2.6 million hectares or 18 percent of the country's
surface land, shockingly the actual forestry now stands about 7 percent of
the land area. But unquestionably, forestry contributes to both economic
and ecological stability of the country. The preservation as well as
conservation of wild life and other forest resources was being depleted at
an alarming rate due to poaching, deforestation, and loss of habitat.
Mostly located in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Sylhet, Tangail and
Mymensingh, large sections of the forests are felled illegally every day,
where forest officials in league with other timber mill owners have caused
this destruction of national wealth with no money going to state coffers.
Apart from the financial loss the resulting loss of bioderversity either
here in Bangladesh or elsewhere in the world carries a price for us all.
For instance, the rosy periwinkle, a plant native to Madagascar,has proved
potent against childhood leukemia. Yet other rare species on this island
nation, most found nowhere else on Earth are disappearing faster than
scientists can catalogue. But this biodiversity and its wonderful efficacy
seem stranger than fiction. At the dawn of the 21st century, with
technology evolving at an ever increasing rate, many people mistakenly
believe the natural world has nothing left to offer us in the way of new
medicines. This could not be further from the truth. Mother Nature has
been creating weird and wonderful chemicals for more than three billion
years; and we are only beginning to sift through these hidden treasures.
New technologies enable us to find, analyze and manipulate molecules as
never before. While today's laboratory scientists can synthesize new
molecules from scratch at a pace unimaginable just a few decades back,
promising compounds produced by nature's most creative creatures
increasingly provide the optimum starting points.

Time and again, we find that plants and animals make
strange molecules that chemists would never devise in their wildest
dreams. For example, researchers could not have invented the anti-cancer
compound "taxol" taken from the Pacific Yew tree. "It is
too fiendishly complex a chemical structure", says natural-products
chemist Gordon Cragg, of the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Some of the
most promising natural wonder drugs come from compounds not usually
associated with healing: poisons. Merck is marketing a blood thinner based
on venom of the deadly saw-scaled viper. A protein from another Asian pit
viper is being studied because it appears to inhibit the spread of
melanoma cells related to skin cancer and a compound called SNX-482 from
the venom of the Cameroon red tarantula may lead to new treatments for
neurological disorders.

Natural pharmaceuticals offered by biodiversity are
still underutilized. Only a few hundred wild species have served to stock
our antibiotics, anti-cancer agents, pain killers and blood thinners. For
example, "fox gloves" (Shial Kata) mostly found in our region
has been found to be so useful to millions of people with heart ailments.
These flowers provide the digoxin which regulate the heartbeat. Many
sufferers from hypertension and high blood pressure owe a debt to the
"Indian snake root shrub" (Sharpamool) for its reserpine. And
the search continues. Extracts from an Amazonian oak tree coagulate
proteins, immensely helping scientists in their search for an AIDS
vaccine. People sleep deeply and breathe easily during operations, thanks
to scopolamine derived from mandrake and thorn apples. Women who take the
contraceptive pill for granted would not be taking it at all were it not
for the yam (Sweet potato). The large tuber is the source of the pill's
active ingredient, diosgenin. Even the healthiest among us take compounds
first discovered in fragrant meadow sweet and willow bark and now known as
aspirin. Only about 13 plants so far known have healed and soothed
millions of people. They're but the merest sample over a quarter of all
prescribed medicines based on plants.

Yet, of the estimated 3,50,000 flowering plants
believed to be in existence, tens of thousands remain undiscovered and
only some 5,000 have been tested exhaustively for their pharmaceutical
attributes. Now this vast store of known and potential medicines is under
threat. Every species everywhere has the potential to teach us something
new. How tragic then it is that just as innovative technologies give us
the ability to take advantage of natural compounds as never before, we
continue to threaten the world's species and the habitats on which they
depend. The European leech source of a new blood thinner was almost wiped
out by overzealous collectors. The same is true for poison dart frogs,
producers of may intriguing chemicals. Tropical cone snails and sponges,
known to harbour analgesic and anticancer compound respectively, live on
coral reefs, one of the planet's most endangered maritime ecosystems.
Known as Silphion to the Greeks and Silphium to the Romans as the most
effective female contraceptive to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the plant
is now extinct. Experiment on lab rats with common fennel (a close
relative of Silphium's) these days did indeed show contraceptive activity.
Unfortunately researchers in the sophisticated laboratories in the U.

S. were unable to test the efficacy of silphium itself.
Because of the insatiable demand for it in the ancient world silphium went
extinct about 1500 years ago.

Assuringly, the biochemistry of the vast majority --
millions -- of other species is an unfathomed reservoir of new and
potentially more effective substances. The reason is to be found in the
principles of evolutionary biology. Caught in an endless arms race, these
species have devised myriad ways to combat microbes and cancercausing
runaway cells. We have scarcely begun to consult them for the experience
stored in their genes. True, it is difficult enough to assess an ecosystem
but in these days of dire economic situation followed by climatic
disruption, policy makers need to understand how various ecosystems
interact. Deforestation in mountains can worsen floods in grasslands or
agricultural lands below as was in the case of China and more recently in
Madagascar. The same thing is being done in parts of Chittagong and Sylhet
in our region. So humans have hurt coastal/marine ecosystems directly by
draining wetland, cutting mangrove, trawling oceans for fish and
destroying reefs and lagoons. But illegal logging of woods in the lush
hill forest of Lathitilla, Sylhet, once home to wild elephants and other
mammals and rampant killing of Royal Bengal Tigers and deers in the
Sunderbans are indications that these little known forest areas will
disappear fast in our country. On the other hand, by doing so we also
damage the ecosystem indirectly as rivers transport to the coasts the
effluents and byproducts of agriculture, industry, urban areas, logging
and dams. It is tempting to put in the words of Bill Clinton, immediate
past President of the U.S. when he visited China in 2000 and met
environmentalists in the scenic city of Guilin. Clinton was fascinated at
the growing awareness at the grassroots level. Clinton said,
"Ultimately our best hope may be that even where governments lag,
their people understand both the stakes and the urgent need for
action". Here in Bangladesh we must also take hold and succeed. In
the struggle against history's profound environmental challenges, we must
participate for the sake of our children, our country and this planet.